5.  The applicants were born in 1957 and 1958 respectively and live in İzmir.
6.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties and as they appear from the documents submitted by them, may be summarised as follows.
7.  On 2 July 2001 at about 10 p.m. the applicants’ 19-year-old son Ali Külah was sitting in a park in İzmir with two friends when a police van stopped nearby and police officers asked them to show their identity cards. The three men gave their identity cards to police officer Ö.A., who passed them on to a civilian sitting in the police van. When the applicants’ son Ali protested and said that the civilian had no business checking his identity card, a uniformed police officer told him to shut up, before proceeding to slap him in the face.
8.  When Ali fell to the ground from the force of the slap, other police officers jumped on him and started beating him up. When Ali managed to free himself from the melee and started running away, police officer Ö.A. gave chase and caught up with him a few blocks away. Officer Ö.A. then kicked Ali and he fell to the ground once again. A gunshot was then heard and officer Ö.A. was seen holding a pistol in his hand and standing next to Ali. Ali was taken to hospital where his condition was deemed to be life-threatening.
9.  The following day police officers and a prosecutor took two statements from Ali while he was in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Ali confirmed the version of the events set out above, and asked for the officer to be prosecuted.
10.  On 6 July 2001 Ali died in the hospital. According to the post-mortem report, the cause of death was a bullet which had entered his neck and exited through his back. A number of injuries observed on his body were also recorded in the report.
11.  In the meantime, according to two police reports drawn up on 3 July 2001, officer Ö.A. was not arrested after the incident. He was released without “having been placed in police custody” and “without having been brought before a doctor”. According to the reports, the officer was transferred to the prosecutor’s office for questioning.
12.  A medical report drawn up on 2 July 2001 notes, however, various cuts and bruised areas on the officer’s body.
13.  On 13 July 2001 the first applicant, Mr Külah, made an official complaint against the police officer responsible for killing his son.
14.  On 16 November 2001 the İzmir prosecutor filed an indictment with the İzmir Assize Court (hereinafter “the trial court”) and charged officer Ö.A. with the offence of manslaughter.
15.  In the course of the trial, officer Ö.A. told the trial court that during the scuffle Ali had attempted to take his pistol. When the pistol had fired, both of them had been holding it, but the officer did not remember which end of the pistol he had been holding.
16.  When the applicants’ legal representative asked the trial court to obtain copies of the ballistic examination reports of the officer’s pistol, it became apparent that the pistol had not been examined for finger prints; it had simply been returned to him by his colleagues after the incident.
17.  In the course of the trial the applicants submitted a number of petitions to the trial court and complained about various defects in the investigation. They argued, in particular, that the report in respect of officer Ö.A.’s medical examination was dubious because it was dated 2 July 2001. In this connection they pointed to the above-mentioned police reports of 3 July 2001 according to which officer Ö.A. had not been medically examined. The applicants brought an official complaint against the persons responsible for drafting the report but the complaint was rejected by the prosecutor and the prosecutor’s decision was upheld by the Karşıyaka Assize Court on 13 April 2005.
18.  On 30 December 2003 the trial court found that officer Ö.A. had shot the applicants’ son Ali with a view to neutralising his resistance to being arrested. It concluded, however, that officer Ö.A. had committed the offence of manslaughter because he had exceeded the limits of his powers in resorting to force which had caused Ali Külah’s death. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment but the trial court reduced the sentence to one year, four months and three days because the officer had committed the offence in the exercise of his duties. Observing that the officer had behaved well during the hearings, it further reduced the sentence to one year, one month and ten days. The execution of the sentence was suspended because the officer had no previous criminal record and because the trial court considered that he was not likely to commit any offences in the future.
19.  The applicants appealed against the judgment and repeated their submissions concerning the defects in the investigation. Referring to the Court’s judgments in cases against Turkey, the applicants argued, inter alia, that the investigation and the trial had been in breach of various provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to life.
20.  On 14 November 2005 the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal in so far as it concerned the trial court’s conclusion concerning the finding of guilt, but quashed it and sent it back to the trial court so that the case could be examined in the light of the provisions of the new Criminal Code which had entered into force in the meantime.
21.  On 31 March 2006 the trial court noted that the provisions of the former Criminal Code under which the officer had been found guilty and sentenced were more favourable to him, and reiterated the conclusions it had reached on 30 December 2003.
22.  The appeal lodged by the applicants was dismissed by the Court of Cassation on 21 May 2007.
23.  The applicants also made an official complaint against the police and a prosecutor for failing to ensure a fingerprint analysis of the pistol. A police officer, A.Y., was held by the İzmir Criminal Court of First Instance to have failed to take the necessary steps at the crime scene. He was also found to be at fault by handing back officer Ö.A.’s pistol before ballistic examinations had been carried out. On 30 October 2008 he was sentenced to the payment of a fine of 861 Turkish liras (TRY) (approximately 480 euros (EUR) at the time).
24.  Both the applicants and officer A.Y. lodged an appeal against the judgment. On 11 November 2010 the Court of Cassation noted that the statute of limitations had expired, and decided to discontinue the criminal proceedings against officer A.Y.
25.  In the meantime, the applicants brought a civil claim against officer Ö.A. and the Ministry of the Interior. On 8 June 2009 the İzmir Civil Court of First Instance ordered officer Ö.A. to pay the applicants TRY 13,875 (approximately EUR 5,550 at the time). The claim made against the Ministry was rejected on the ground that no such claim could be brought against the Ministry before a civil court.
26.  The applicants also unsuccessfully brought a claim against the Ministry of Justice before the Ankara Administrative Court, and argued that the Ministry had been responsible for the defects in the investigation. In that connection the applicants alleged, inter alia, that their son had been deprived of his right to life as a result of the actions of the police officer and that the judicial authorities had breached their obligations under Articles 2, 3, 6 and 13 of the Convention by failing to conduct an effective investigation.